Monday, September 24, 2007

After Dembskis presentation on flagella and 'The Cell as an Automated City' and all the decade old tripe Creationists keep pretending is a way cool new paradigm, I was firmly convinced that ID-ers were like Bart Simpson reaching for an electric cupcake-- getting burned over and over, and never learning their lesson.

But today, Behe demonstrated that he has learned something in the past two months:

Ohhhhhh! Now we mean 'breaking genes'! You know I really dont remember 'breaking genes' being a theme in 'Edge', but I guess thats what Behe means now.

Whatever the hell 'breaking genes' means. You know, why is it that I can talk to people from China, from France, from Argentina, from alllll over the world in the language of 'science'-- but the second a Creationist opens their mouths speaking their own special little 'scientific' language, no one else knows what the hell Creationists talking about?

I think this comment is really fun too:

As you might expect for such a controversial topic, some scientists have stumbled over each other to challenge my argument. I’ve examined their writings closely and think none of them touch the heart of my argument.

Ohhhhhh! Didnt touch 'the heart'? Didnt touch 'the heart' of your argument? You mean 'the heart' that was all about how gene duplications dont happen and protein-protein interactions dont evolve and such? You know, the entire point of 'Edge'? I didnt touch 'the heart' of that argument?

In it I clearly state that random evolution works well up to the species level, perhaps to the genus and family level too. But at the level of vertebrate classes (birds, fish, etc), the molecular developmental programs needed would be beyond the edge of evolution.

So, um, HIV evolution is working above the family level?

I also see there's a creationist blogging on the article too. Could be amusing.

New Scientist reports "Cheryl Nickerson at Arizona State University in Tempe, US, and her colleagues launched flasks of the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium into space on the shuttle Atlantis in September 2006.

The shuttle returned after 12 days, during which time the microbes had altered the way they express 167 genes compared with bacteria that remained on Earth. The team found that these space-mutated bugs were almost three times as likely to kill infected mice compared with their ground-grown counterparts."

NO, NO, NO! God resents our intrusion into his celestial domain and designed those superbugs.

It's always a toss up between creationists who is easiest to fisk. In the beginning I wondered if Behe would get back to do science. But it is now evident that he is stuck in the same rut as all creationists.

Instead he has started to show real alienation with science concepts and methods. Witness his lack of definition of "test" and "evidence". Unfortunately this doesn't leave one with much else to do than to mock the flailing Behemoth that is his ignorance.

When the motions of the galaxies away from the earth was first observed in the 1930s, that led to the Big Bang hypothesis.